While writing my recent posts about my collection of wirebound notebooks (see Part 1 and Part 2), I was looking for more information about the JoRedCo notebook brand. I have two in my collection, but hadn’t really heard much about the brand, other than a commenter having mentioned finding old stock for sale.
Google provided a bit more information about the company. According to a trademark listing, the name JoRedCo belonged to Joseph Redegeld & Co., of Elizabeth, NJ, and was used as a brand for various stationery and office supply products. Online records show the company was incorporated in New Jersey in 1965, though a 1909 business directory lists a Joseph Redegeld & Co. at 190 Park Row in Manhattan. At some later date, their address changed to Florida, but the Google listing at that address shows that it is permanently closed.
My search also unearthed some interesting images of JoRedCo notebooks.
The Crystal Bridges Museum owns a Georgia O’Keeffe sketchbook made by JoRedCo. Interestingly, they also have one that looks exactly the same, except that the brand is Pen-Tab. Maybe the companies merged, or the name changed? Google doesn’t seem to show any records of the two companies having a connection.
The Mark E. Mitchell Collection of African American History has images of a JoRedCo notebook used by Alex Haley, the author of Roots.
On Twitter, I found an image of Jack Kerouac’s notebooks including at least two by JoRedCo. I thought I might have included this in some other post about Kerouac, but if I did, I can’t find it!
How about you, readers? Do any of you have JoRedCo notebooks in your collection?
This week’s addict posted some pictures of their notebook stash on Reddit. It’s a large and tidily stored collection! This person seems to have several favorite types and sizes of notebooks of which they’ve bought multiples. Many are from Asian brands such as Muji, Kokuyo, Maruman, Nanami Paper and Apica, but other brands like Leuchtturm, Moleskine, Mead and Rhodia are also included.
You can see the original posts listing all the brands at these links:
A reader named Nicholas passed along a great tip about a notebook from the collection of the Morgan Library: “Thought of Notebook Stories while reading this article on Isaac Newton’s teenage pocket notebook. Video at the top of the page has some amazing images of his notebook.”
The Morgan’s earliest acquisition related to the history of science came in 1907, when J. Pierpont Morgan purchased a small notebook kept by Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) during his late teenage years. As one of four surviving notebooks that document Newton’s early schooling in Lincolnshire and university education at Trinity College, Cambridge, the pocket memorandum book affords considerable insight into the reading practices and intellectual preoccupations of Newton before he made his significant mathematical and scientific discoveries.
It’s always fun to see chefs’ notebooks… fun and mouth-watering! From Honolulu Magazine:
Some chefs sketch out their ideas for new dishes; most don’t. At Chef Mavro, chef/owner Jeremy Shigekane’s intricate presentations—each of which will end up as a course on one of his tasting menus—begin with a vegetable or fruit. He checks farmlinkhawaii.com, a site that shows what local farmers are harvesting, and starts from there. One month he might choose liliko‘i, another month eggplant. Then he opens his sketchbook and puts pen to paper.
Continuing with Part 2 of my exploration of spiral notebooks and wire-o notebooks from my collection! As in Part 1, all of these are 3 x 5″ notebooks unless otherwise noted, and mostly from the 1980s.
Most of my pocket size wire-o and spiral notebooks, dating from the 1970s to early 1990s.
The plain red Roaring Spring notebook above is also branded as Top Scholar on the back cover. Here are some other Top Scholar notebooks, I guess from before they merged with Roaring Spring. They date to the early ’80s. I’ve previously written about the one with the trippy collage cover, which is so unlike all my other spiral notebooks : An Unusual 1980s Spiral Notebook
Mead became such a ubiquitous name in stationery from the ’80s onwards, but I only have a few Mead notebooks in my collection. (I know I used many larger Mead spiral notebooks in school, but I didn’t tend to keep those.) These are pretty unremarkable. They don’t say where they were made. Here we see one of my few 4 x 6″ notebooks, which is very beat up because it contains a sort of cartoon soap opera written for, by, and about all my junior high school friends, so it was passed around a lot between classes in 1981 or thereabouts. It’s very funny but also rather embarrassing to read now! Mead still makes very similar pocket spiral notebooks, which you can get in super cheap multi packs.
I have a couple of notebooks made by Joredco, of which one is 4 x 6″. I don’t know much about this company but found an online listing saying the trademark for the name had expired in 1996, having been held by Joseph Redegeld & Co., of Elizabeth, NJ. These date to the late 1980s.
Here are two other 4 x 6″ notebooks, the blue one made by Top Flight, which is still an active brand, and the Snoopy one, made by Plymouth Inc. I posted about the Snoopy notebook here: Happy Valentine’s Day
The rest of the collection is kind of a random assortment of brands (noted in the captions below). I rather like the Sparco notebook, again because it has a slim profile with very small wire-o rings. The only problem with such tight rings is that the pages can get stuck when they’re being turned. I am sure I have spent many hours in my life trying to straighten notebook pages that were sticking out! Sparco is still a current brand but I’m not sure if they still make pocket notebooks like this. The green Harvard Square notebook belonged to my father, and I wrote about it in this post: Harvard Square Notebook, late 1960s- early 1970s
Tru Rite, Harvard Square distributed by Brooks-Melrose, Fay-vo-rite made by Fay Paper Products, Sparco
Plawner Co., Camp,Meyers Supply Inc.
There are a few other notebooks with wire bindings that date to my adult life. I remember buying this Maruman wire-o notebook in San Francisco in the early ’90s. It might be my first Japanese notebook! I was totally enamored with the cool cover. Written about here: Notebooks in My Office. Maruman is still very much an active brand, though this product is no longer current.
Clairefontaine also makes an appearance. I only used a few pages of this notebook, perhaps because I would have bought it right around the time in the ’90s when my notebook obsession switched to Filofaxes and hardcover or softcover journals with stitched bindings. The current version has slightly different covers.
The marbled wire-o notebook also would date to the ’90s. It has unlined sketch paper inside, but was used for daily notes at a job. There is no brand information. It reminds me how surprising it is that these pocket notebooks always had lined pages– why didn’t anyone ever make them with a plain or squared option? Pocket size sketchbooks with wire bindings are kind of rare too.
My taste in notebooks is pretty different now, but I had a good long run with all these pocket spiralnotebooks! I just couldn’t resist them in my younger days. Many of my notebooks show evidence of being started for random specific purposes and then soon being abandoned– sometimes I just wanted an excuse to buy a new notebook! I rarely wrote anything resembling a diary in them, but the notes and scribbles do reflect aspects of my life at the time– starting clubs with my friends, interests in things like astronomy or geography, goofy cartoons, school assignments, tracking how much (how little) money I had, and grappling with my first few jobs. I’m glad I’ve saved them all these years!
Here is a very cute eBay find: a 3 x 5″ Collegiate notebook that I would guess is maybe from the 1940s-1950s or maybe earlier given that the price is only 10 cents. Cool cover design and excellent brown pressboard cover. For sale on eBay as of this writing for $9.99 or best offer. After wallowing in my own collection of spiral notebooks, I’m tempted by this one, but I’m trying to save my pennies so I think I’ll pass!
I couldn’t remember seeing other examples of the Collegiate notebook brand. Searching online, the only image result was the one below, from the Smithsonian Museum. The link led to a collection of papers belonging to an archaeologist named Ernst Herzfeld, who died in 1948, but there were no additional images of this notebook as far as I could see. The branding looks a little different and there is no price on the cover, so it’s not all that helpful in establishing a timeframe for this brand, other than that it existed before 1948. The logo below looks more art deco to me, as if it were from the 1920s-1930s, and that seems to be consistent with the dates when Hertzfeld was actively doing field work. If that is the case, the Collegiate notebook below could be one of the earliest examples of spiral binding, as spiral notebooks were introduced around 1934. I wonder what they mean by it being a “combination theme and note book.”
Some of my earliest notebook obsessions were spiral and wire-o binding notebooks. Back when I was a kid, other kinds of notebook were not as easy to find, or were prohibitively expensive for a kid to buy with her allowance. Nowadays, I rarely find myself using a wire bound notebook, but I thought I’d take a look at some favorites from my collection. (I found myself unable to limit myself to just a few favorites, so I’m splitting this into two posts!) All of these are 3 x 5″ notebooks with lined pages, unless otherwise noted.
Most of my pocket size wire-o and spiral notebooks, dating from the 1970s to early 1990s.
Most of these notebooks are from childhood, and my top favorites from back then would be these Paper King notebooks from the late ’70s-early ’80s. They are the first notebooks I owned that had a wire-o binding instead of a regular spiral and I loved that detail. It’s so much tidier than a spiral, less likely to catch on things and when you flip the pages around to the back, they stay aligned rather than being offset by one hole. I especially liked the red one because for some reason it was thicker than the others. With wire-bound notebooks, I always liked it when the rings were just barely wider than the thickness of the pages. I don’t remember ever seeing these notebooks or this brand for sale again after the short period of time in which I bought these 3. I wrote more about one of them in this post: Paper King Notebook
The Vernon Mcmillan memo books were also favorites, particularly the ones with the mottled pressboard covers, which date to the late ’80s. (The neon green one is from the mid-’70s and is one of my oldest notebooks in terms of personal usage.) Again I liked the thickness and ratio of ring size to the pages, and I loved the pressboard covers. I wrote more about one of these notebooks: Mid-1980s Vernon McMillan Notebook
I also loved these “Comp” pocket memo books. Such a cool design. These are quite thin, but on two of them, the rings are smaller so they have a nice feel. But the rings are plastic, and they are double looped around the end holes, which makes it a little awkward when you try to flip the pages all the way to the back. The third Comp memo has a normal metal spiral, but with a slightly larger diameter. See more details on these in this post: Early 1980s Comp Pocket Memo Books
The same slim profile is evident on these Bear Brand notebooks dating to the early ’80s, and one of them also has the double looped plastic spiral. They were sold by the Eugene B. Baehr Company of Stamford CT, but made in Taiwan. I can’t find any trace of this company online.
Also from the early ’80s, these Reliance notebooks have a pleasing design, especially the marbled looking ones. These were made in Korea and the company was based in Tennessee.
The Pen-Tab notebooks are not particularly exciting but it’s interesting to see how the design and manufacturing changed while the product number is the same. The two red ones were made in Taiwan. The yellow one was made in Argentina, which seems really unusual. The yellow notebook is very thin vs. the spiral diameter but it’s because a lot of pages were ripped out. (I did not tend to rip pages out of my own notebooks, but this one belonged to my mother originally, and she gave it to me when I left for college, with notes about how I should wash some of my clothes. Laundry had not been one of my chores up til that point!) One of the red notebooks just has the Pen-Tab name, but the other two have the company name as Prudential-Feldco.
These CVS notebooks appealed to me enough to buy two of them, for some reason. They are pretty basic, but have square corners, which is unusual. One is somewhat thicker, and is filled with daily lists of homework for my high school classes. The other was only used about halfway, and contained random lists and self-improvement resolutions, as well as some poetry copied out from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. It also contained one page I have shown below, as I found it rather amusing!
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this post with more details on the rest of the collection!
In the Guardian, Adrian Searle writes about his usage of notebooks:
One for dreams, one for writing down things you might otherwise forget, one for composing drafts and organising your thoughts: in the end, they all get mixed up, but that’s half the fun of keeping notebooks. You could use your phone, but it isn’t the same. Unlike JMW Turner’s sketchbooks or his palette, you can’t stick an iPhone in a vitrine in some Tate archive show – should you end up there. It might ring.
Collected thoughts … some of Adrian Searle’s notebooks Photograph: Adrian Searle
I’m sure everyone’s seen the rather disturbing news about the arrival in the US of the “Murder Hornet.” These scary bugs, more formally known as the Asian Giant Hornet, have a nasty sting and a habit of decapitating bees. And they’re huge! How huge are they? Up to two inches long, as shown in the photo below with a Rite in the Rain #135 top opening wire-bound waterproof notebook, whose sheets measure 3 x 5″, and which has a handy ruler on the back cover.
I have a Rite in the Rain notebook somewhere in my collection. Luckily mine has not had any encounters with terrifying invasive insects. The ones in the photo are dead, but I still wouldn’t want them anywhere near my notebooks, or me!
With queens that can grow to two inches long, Asian giant hornets can use mandibles shaped like spiked shark fins to wipe out a honeybee hive in a matter of hours, decapitating the bees and flying away with the thoraxes to feed their young. For larger targets, the hornet’s potent venom and stinger — long enough to puncture a beekeeping suit — make for an excruciating combination that victims have likened to hot metal driving into their skin.
In Japan, the hornets kill up to 50 people a year. Now, for the first time, they have arrived in the United States.
From the New York Times, ‘Murder Hornets’ in the U.S.: The Rush to Stop the Asian Giant Hornet
I’ve heard from a couple of readers on how they’re notebooking their way through the COVID-19 shutdown. Here are their stories:
Tina Koyama
A little more than 3 weeks ago, I was so freaked out about the pandemic that I needed something to do to calm my mind so that I could move on with my day. I started drawing my hand (I’ve been washing them so much that I was noticing them more than I ever had before). I committed to drawing my hand every day until this disaster is over. Now it’s become kind of a morning meditation, a much-needed ritual in a time when all my usual routines are gone. Here are a couple of blog posts I wrote about it:
I’m posting my daily hand drawings on Instagram: @miatagrrl
Here are a few of Tina’s hand drawings, they’re great!
Elaine
I keep a journal that tends to have a mixture of writing about my day, quotes that catch my fancy, design ideas, doodles, sketches and so on. I only keep the one journal, plus an assortment of sketchbooks. My current journal is the Endless Recorder in the Pen Chalet exclusive edition. It’s fairly unstructured except that I always date the page. Since falling down the rabbit hole of fountain pens and ink, I’ve also introduced additional excuses to write, such as copying out news headlines. Sometime they are the serious ones and sometime I deliberately search for odd and amusing ones. I also try to include more art than words, as I realised that’s what I most enjoy looking at again later. However the current situation has me writing more than usual. I don’t actually feel particularly anxious, it’s more about feeling challenged about continuing to live life as normally as possible. (It’s really no hardship to me to work from home and occasionally buy groceries… I’m not an extrovert! I’m just not getting as much exercise as I should.)
Here are a few of Elaine’s journal pages:
Nifty
As for me, I am trying to draw every day and keep journaling, but sometimes there isn’t anything interesting to write about! “Another rainy day at home…” Things can kind of blur together when you’re just doing the same things all the time. But at least it is spring and I have gardening to think about! I used an Appointed notebook to lay out plans for some perennials, as well as laying some flagstones on a gravel patio area. Yes, I had enough time on my hands to cut out individual to-scale flagstones and plants to play with!
I’ve also been trying to use my Nolty Daily Book as a sort of sketch diary. I sometimes write more about the day, but generally try to do a very simple drawing each day and record some basic info. I’m still figuring out what I want to put in my week-per-spread Nolty Efficiency Notebook vs. the Daily Book.
Many thanks to Elaine and Tina for sharing their pandemic notebooking stories! By now, some parts of the USA are trying to reopen a bit but many of us still have a period of staying at home ahead of us. Stay safe, everyone!
Notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, diaries: in search of the perfect page…
